text: If the conditions are good, chemical gardens can also occur in nature. There is evidence from paleontology, that such chemical gardens may fossilize. Such pseudofossils can be very difficult to distinguish from fossilized organisms. Indeed, some of the earliest purported fossils of life might be fossilized chemical gardens.
  Mixing iron-rich particles with alkaline liquids containing the chemicals silicate or carbonate have created biological-looking structures. Such structures may appear to be biological and/or fossils. According to researchers, "Chemical reactions like these have been studied for hundreds of years but they had not previously been shown to mimic these tiny iron-rich structures inside rocks. These results call for a re-examination of many ancient real-world examples to see if they are more likely to be fossils or non-biological mineral deposits."
  One use of the study of chemical gardening is to be better able to distinguish biological structures, including fossils, from non-biological structures on the planet Mars.